Trifluoromethylthiolation of molecules is a more and more studied reaction. In particular, the direct electrophilic trifluoromethylthiolation plays an important role in this chemistry. Among the various developed reagents, trifluoromethanesulfenamides constitute an efficient family of reagents. However, no systematic comparison of these two generations has been realized. In this paper, the difference of reactivity of these reagents is studied towards various nucleophiles. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.